“Just...think about it, okay?” Tatum asked, standing in between Talia and the driver’s-side car door.
“It would be a selfish thing to do.” She said out loud what she’d been telling herself all night long.
She had to contact someone, though. The more she’d studied Kent’s finished product, without the boy there to distract her, the more things she’d seen that concerned her.
He hadn’t been overt, of course. He was too smart for that. But somehow those bad words had made it from the trash to his poster. Not the exact letters, of course. These were much smaller. And partially hidden. He’d used letters as borders on a number of pictures and she’d thought him creative. Until she’d seen the ones she’d prohibited earlier in the week. He must have pieced them together from magazines at home and slipped them onto the collage without her noticing.
“Not if you’re doing it for me,” Tatum said. “And him. Did you ever think that maybe he’d like to know he has an aunt? Or maybe I could be a friend to him now that his mom’s gone? Kind of like a big sister.”
There were things she should say. A right way to handle this. Talia stood silently.
“Well, anyway, just think about it,” Tatum said, stepping back from the door.
Talia nodded. Tatum backed up a few more steps.
“I love you, Tal.” Her sweet voice carried across the driveway.
“I love you, too, Baby Tay.” She wanted more than anything to make things right with Tatum. Needed to do so if she was ever going to be right with her soul.
Tatum’s frown turned into a huge grin, and Talia figured she’d done okay. This time.
SHERMAN PACED. BECAUSE what he wanted to do was haul his son out of bed, into the office and stand there while Kent opened the restricted file folder on his mother’s computer.
His computer.
Dr. Jordon had told him the key to reaching Kent was patience. If he came on strong, the boy was just going to clam up, get defensive. Kent was pushing Sherman away. He needed to know that he was loved, no matter how much he acted out. He was testing Sherman, to see if he could make Sherman leave him, too.
Or some such thing.
It made sense. Sherman got it, logically. And he was beside himself with worry, disappointment and a bit of anger, too, as he stood there locked out of a computer in his own home, and waited.
As it turned out, Kent slept until eight. In spite of the vacuuming Sherman had done. And in spite of the number of times he’d let the screen door slam shut behind him after spotting a weed in the juniper tree bed from the living-room window, or checking on the mail in case he’d missed it the night before, or making sure the hose was wound up.
Maybe he’d wanted to let the door slam a number of times to get his son up and out of bed. That was possible, too.
Sherman had a bowl of sugared cereal sitting on the counter, ready for milk, and pushed the button down on the toaster to cook the bread he’d had waiting there.
He poured milk over his own oat cereal and joined Kent at the table. He talked about their plans to go to the batting cages later that afternoon. About a game they were going to watch that night. He asked his son if hot dogs sounded good for dinner.
He made it until Kent came out of his room in jeans that were too pristine to belong to a little boy and a game-day jersey tucked into them before calling his son into the office.
“Log on for me,” he said, pointing to Kent’s computer.
Without hesitating, the boy did just that. And then plopped down into his chair.
“Show me what’s new,” Sherman said next.
Kent took him through a couple of new homework folders. Showed him a new level he’d reached on a downloaded video game. A cartoon game where he had to figure out increasingly difficult puzzles to move from one level to the next. Nothing to do with death, dying or killing. The boy was not allowed to do any online gaming at all. Sherman wasn’t chancing what he might come across or be asked to do during the game chats. But Kent didn’t seem to mind.
Leaning forward in his own chair, which he’d pulled over, Sherman followed Kent’s explanations, praising him where praise had been earned. And slowly started to crumble a bit inside.
Kent wasn’t going to show him the folder. He knew it as surely as he knew he was sitting there. The boy had just accessed the folder that week, though Sherman had been able to ascertain earlier by clicking on its properties that it had existed for almost a year.
“That’s it,” Kent finally said, dropping back in the chair that was too big for him. His head was resting against the back of the chair, which meant that his back nearly covered the seat of it.
“You sure?” Sherman asked. He’d have crossed his fingers behind his back if he’d been his son’s age.
“Yeah.”
“You haven’t done anything else on this computer this week.”
“Nope.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Nope.”
Kent’s heel tapped on the floor, his expression placid.
“You know what happens if I find out you’re lying to me.” Just checking. Or reminding.
“I lose my right to my own computer. I have to do homework on the laptop that’s offline and empty of all games.”
“Right.” He waited. Giving Kent the chance to think on it and come clean.
The boy had to know he was going to bust him. He knew the folder was there. And he’d also know that Sherman knew something. He’d never grilled him before.
And maybe he should have.
Or...
Maybe he should leave Kent to his privacy. The idea was tempting. It couldn’t be a permanent condition. He was going to have to know what was going on. But maybe he should speak with Dr. Jordon first. Maybe he’d like a good, relaxing weekend with his son before they got up Monday morning and had to slay dragons again.
Yeah, maybe. He could keep an eye on Kent all weekend. Make sure that the boy didn’t access whatever was in the troubling folder.
Or maybe he should give Kent time alone in the office and wait for him to think it was safe to open the folder. Maybe he should bust him then, with the evidence on the screen...
Duplicity had never been his way. He wasn’t usually a coward, either.
And since when did he need a psychologist telling him how to discipline his son?
He amended that last thought. He’d needed it since Brooke’s death, of course. But no matter how much Kent was struggling...
“I can’t abide lying in this house, Kent,” he said aloud. There was no attack here. Nothing to push Kent into defensive mode. There was only impenetrable fact.
“I’m not lying.” His son looked him straight in the eye.
And left Sherman no choice but to lean forward, take the boy’s mouse and find the incriminating folder. Kent, still leaning back as though he hadn’t a care in the world, watched him. Sherman clicked to open the folder and got the password protection screen.
“Open it,” he told his son.
Sitting up, Kent did so, quickly enough that even though he was watching, Sherman didn’t catch the password. Clearly, it was one they’d never used before. He’d tried everything he could think of while his son slept in.
The